


strange you never knew

by flowermasters



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Brother Feels, Emotional Baggage, F/M, Light Angst, Light Dom/sub, Love Triangles, Mild Sexual Content, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Movie 2: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, Snapshots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 12:19:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17487941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowermasters/pseuds/flowermasters
Summary: Theseus, Leta, and an unconventional romance. In absentia: Newt.





	strange you never knew

**Author's Note:**

> The author's soundtrack for this fic: "NFWMB" // Hozier, "Love Lies" // Khalid & Normani, "I Need a Forest Fire" // James Blake, "Fade Into You" // Mazzy Star.
> 
> A translation of this fic into Chinese is available [here](http://irenecream.lofter.com/post/1da115d9_12d76610e)!

Leta recognizes the potion even before she steps close enough to the cauldron to look; the distinctive spirals of vapor in the air give it away. _Amortentia_ , she remembers reading, finger pressed to the yellowed page of her Potions textbook, _the most powerful love potion yet known. Brewers,_ _take care, for it is impossible to replicate true love_ _—_

When she was younger, it smelled to her of strong tea, a hint of fresh earthiness like the inside of a greenhouse, and the towering pines of the Forbidden Forest. Then, very early in her sixth year, Leta had been cautiously pleased with the immediate spark of recognition she felt as she stood over the cauldron and inhaled, and terrified at the idea of what it represented. She thinks that if she smelled the same now she might only feel the dull stab of old regret, or maybe even nothing at all.

The shop is as dark and vaguely moist as the Potions dungeon had been then, with a Knockturn Alley filth lingering in every corner. This is no place for a lady, despite the fact that the shop is clearly oriented toward witches; frills and négligées everywhere, to make no mention of the instruments of pleasure—and possibly of torture—displayed on shelves and in cases. The shopkeeper, a woman, had screamed obscenities as Travers read to her the circumstances of the raid. He and Theseus had stepped into the back room of the shop as another Auror escorted the witch from the premises, and they have not yet returned, apparently consumed with whatever horrors she’s been reported for.

Still, Leta has another moment or two until Travers remembers the paperwork he’d sent her to fetch. Pulled by the allure of the potion on display, she leans in close and breathes, taking in the scent of the last dregs. Her eyes are fixed on the doorway to the rear of the shop as Theseus appears, his expression expectant, looking for her and finding her. He’s good at that.

She smells leather, clean, sharp, and masculine. Tea. Fresh mountain air.

The problem, Leta realizes as she exhales and straightens, holding Theseus’s gaze until she Disapparates, is that Theseus and Newt take their tea the exact same way.

* * *

He makes love to her on his desk once, one night when most, hopefully all, of the other Aurors have gone. Theseus remains, the dutiful head hard at work, and Leta with him. They’ve cast no Silencing Charm; anyone who happened to still be in the building could hear them through the door if they passed his office. The thought makes Leta cling to him as if for protection, her hands on his broad shoulders, nails _scritching_ against the white fabric of his shirt. She allows herself to believe she is safe.

“Leta,” he says, against her neck. “Leta, Leta.”

“Yes?” she says, her voice hitching, a thrust knocking the breath out of her. She’s always breathless when they make love; it’s been months now, since they began, but something always takes her by surprise when they do. She’s not sure what, since she’d had a feeling it might come to this long before it did.

Theseus huffs a laugh. “Nothing,” he says, and she can’t tell if he’s shaking his head against her shoulder or if it’s only the force of their movements, making their bodies rub together in various ways. He is so large compared to her, in every way, and yet he hides his face in the crook of her neck like a boy. Like he belongs there. “I just wanted to say your name, that’s all.”

He tightens his grip on her hips, keeps thrusting until she comes, trembling and hiding noises against his shoulder. He stays pressed tightly against her even after their motion has stopped, their breaths slowing together, twined around each other in the full brightness of his cramped, presently chaotic office. They stay like this for a time, as if it will protect them from the evidence of crime all around them, vile, vicious crime. Protect them from the eyes of the world.

“Theseus,” Leta says, able to tuck her chin on his shoulder with how stooped he is at the moment. The pose is surely uncomfortable, but he makes no complaint, only a satisfied sigh.

“Mm?”

She mulls it over for a moment. “Nothing.”

* * *

They met at an engagement party. She supposes that this, and that she’d been there alone, must be why Theseus seems to think that she likes public life. He takes her to dinners, to go dancing, to drink with the others from the office, promising her fun and friendship.

It’s not that she minds all the time; she’s known the unpleasant feeling of eyes on her since she was young, although at some point—probably that night, at the engagement party, or shortly thereafter—the cast of the gazes that followed her had gone from unfriendly at best to interested, curious, desirous. She just knows that Theseus minds, sometimes.

“Doesn’t it just wear you out?” she asks, when they’ve Apparated back to his flat. She loosens her grip on his upper arm, but doesn’t let go just yet.

“What?” Theseus asks. He had a bit more to drink than she did at the pub, the result of a long week at work, raids and paperwork and bureaucracy and his brother dodging him at every turn. His cheek, when she reaches up to touch it with her other hand, is flushed, so that he feels a little feverish.

“Pretending that it isn’t strange,” Leta says, lowering her hand and pulling away. She draws the curtains with a twitch of her wand, turns on the nearest lamp, then heads for his kitchen to make tea. This she does by hand, fetching the kettle and going about lighting the stove.

Theseus follows, leaning the length of himself against the doorframe. “I’m not much for riddles at the moment.”

Leta smiles. “It’s no riddle,” she says, putting the kettle on. “It has to be strange, having all those people look to you. Put their absolute faith in you, all the time, without even really knowing you. The real you.”

Theseus’s brow furrows. When he cocks his head like that at her, looks at her askance while he tries to tease out her meaning, a rosy sense of familiarity blooms in her chest. He and Newt are very different creatures, one naturally social and the other far from it, but when perplexed they react in strikingly similar ways. She has always had a knack for mystifying people.

“Are you implying that my men shouldn’t put their faith in me?” Theseus asks, puffing up where he stands.

“No,” Leta says, still waiting for the kettle to boil, though she could easily lift her wand and make it so. “They’re right to do it. But doesn’t it weigh on you?”

Theseus doesn’t say anything, and for a moment she wonders if she’s wounded him. But a beat later, he steps up behind her, the warm line of him at her back saying without words, _yes, of course it does._

* * *

It would come as a surprise to many in the wizarding world _—_ and there are certainly many who have wondered over the years—that the great Theseus Scamander is so easily managed with the right touch, the right words. Far from their strapping hero, for Leta, he’s pliant. Supplicant. It makes her deeply uncomfortable even as it fascinates her, having all that power and attention focused solely on her.

He kneels. Lies on his back. Crosses his wrists over his head for her, begs for a spell to bind them, sometimes even begs for a slap, though it is seldom given. It’s what he needs, sometimes.

 _I like a firm hand_ , he’d told her once, both confrontational and shy in the way only powerful men could be—his tone brisk even as he could not quite meet her eyes. _I can admit that. To you._

They are both plagued with recurring dreams, but Theseus usually sleeps well after he’s been handled so. His dreams are more dramatic than hers, anyhow; he dreams of bodies flying—no, limbs—and wakes winded and sweating, sometimes unable to speak for several minutes until she draws the words out of him like poison. Regardless of circumstance, Leta dreams of a less bombastic death, a death that smothers, pressing and crushing small bodies into nonexistence. She wakes silently, eyes closed one second and open the next, and can never fall asleep again.

“Darling,” Theseus mumbles, after rolling over and nearly crashing into her stiff form. “Can’t sleep?”

“I’m alright,” she says, when he shows signs of beginning to rouse for real. “Go back to sleep, Theseus.”

He puts an arm over her middle, and she obligingly lets him burrow his warm, sleepy face into the crook of her neck and shoulder. Allows herself to be soothed, albeit slightly, by his nearness and understanding. He knows she dreams of drowning, had been told as much when she could no longer account for her odd sleep patterns, and he knows by now that she doesn’t want to talk about it.

He inhales, low and slow, and then exhales. She wonders, fleetingly, what he smells. The lavender oil she applies to her temples before bed? The balm in her hair?

Sea water. The blood that follows her, always.

* * *

“He knows we’re coming,” Leta asks outside Flourish and Blotts, “doesn’t he?”

There’s already a smattering of reporters gathered outside, grumbling amongst themselves about the wait. Theseus smiles thinly and doesn’t meet her eyes, looking instead to the doorman. “Of course,” he says.

Newt must’ve known, because he doesn’t so much as look in their direction when they enter, or at any point thereafter. He still hides his eyes as best he can, even now, grown as they all are. He’s nearly as tall as Theseus, but he hunches where Theseus stands straight as a rod. He does not return Leta’s increasingly desperate smiles.

Newt and fame are like oil and water. He is pleasant to everyone, even the pushy photographers, but he fidgets, shifts his weight awkwardly, rubs at the back of his neck—a gesture he shares with his brother. Leta almost forgets her own discomfort, just watching his.

“You—you didn’t have to come, you know,” he says, after about an hour of this. This seems to be directed at Theseus, but Leta is, of course, implicated. Perhaps even more so.

“Nonsense,” Theseus says, clapping a hand on Newt’s shoulder, casting his gaze around the shop, aware that they’re being watched. His words, at least, are for Newt alone. “Leta and I are your family. We wanted to.” The vigor of his gesture, his hand lingering to squeeze Newt’s shoulder, belies the tender regard he holds for his brother. Such big hearts, the both of them, and not so different at all.

Leta thinks of the ring she wears, though its new, heavy presence is rarely forgotten. “Family,” she agrees, trying it out for herself, adjusting to its weight on her tongue.

Both of them look at her now, perhaps waiting for her to say something more. At her side, Theseus beams. It’s Newt’s eyes she meets, there among the stacks of the achievements he's made since they last saw one another, and it’s Newt for whom she smiles, just then.

* * *

“I’ve had a note from my brother,” Theseus says. He’s sitting at his writing desk when Leta enters his flat, fresh from running Saturday errands. There’s a glass of whiskey on the table, mostly untouched.

“And?” Leta asks, shedding her coat and hanging it on the hook, next to his.

“He’s agreed,” Theseus says. To be best man, of course. Newt would have been hard-pressed to say no. “I was wondering if I ought to—do you think he’d come round? For dinner, maybe?”

He lifts his arm, hand creeping up toward the back of his neck. He looks uncertain, a look only she knows on him. She draws close, rests her hands on his shoulders, so that he drops his arm. “I think he will come round,” she says, “eventually.”

He looks up at her, lifts his hands to rest over her own on his shoulders. His eyes are very gray from this angle, like a cold, crisp dawn. “Leta,” he says. “You always understand my meaning.”

She smiles. If only she understood her own so easily. “One of my many talents.”

“I love you,” he says.

Her smile does not fade. “And I you.”


End file.
